Page Six - At the Bat Rack Frankenset

The Legend Continues! Page Six of the "At The Bat Rack" Frankenset is here. 

Page One

Page Two

Page Three 

Page Four

Page Five

Rules -

9 different players
9 different card sets
9 different teams
player is at the bat rack (or bat pile) in or near the dugout
Have fun (most important)

Page Six!

And the backs:

46 - David Green 1985 Fleer Update
47 - Jeff Bagwell 2005 Bowman
48 - Gorman Thomas 1986 Topps All-Star Collector's Edition
49 - Pat Meares 1998 Topps
50 - Edgar Renteria 2003 Upper Deck Vintage
51 - Robin Yount 1983 Fleer
52 - Bobby Thomson 1992 Action Packed
53 - Greg Gross 1985 Fleer Baseball Star Stickers
54 - Elmer Valo 1957 Topps

OK, so I know I need to replace Robin Yount at card #51 - he's standing outside the batting cage, but not at the bat rack. I really scoured all of the #51's I could find, and so far this is the closest one. The consolation on this page is the grandaddy of them all, Elmer Valo's 1957 Topps Card! This card is the reason the Frankenset exists.

Oddballs from Out West

Sunday night I was losing auctions for Willians Astudillo parallels (which I must say are selling much higher that they ought to, IMO), I switched gears and turned my attention to some older Player collections. Searching for Elmer Valo cards now usually has just one or two results for "new to me" cards, but this time I found this odd item - a magazine (?) page, promo photo (?) pasted onto a three hole punch scrapbook page. He's (I'm pretty sure) sporting a Philadelphia A's uni (might be KC, but I think they had a diff. hat), so my best guess is that this is from the early to mid 50s. He played for the A's through 1956 in KC. Not sure if there's anything on the back. The corners are a little loose, and can be peeled back a little, but I hesitate to do much more for fear of tearing it. ODD!

A season after the trade from MN to TX, Bert Blyleven posed for this Postcard. My gcrl research tells me that the #4 armband is in memory of teammate Danny Thompson, who was the other player Texas received in the Blyleven trade. Thompson died at the age of 29 in the 1976 offseason after succumbing to Leukemia. Blyleven would toss 11 shutouts for Texas over a season and a half, and was the AL leader in WHIP in 1977.

Here's the back of the postcard, printed in Los Angeles.

Mark Hoyle a while back sent some gorgeous 1963 Western Oil and Fuel company prints by artist Nicholas Volpe. Local grocery chain SuperValu got into the fine art act in 1970, producing a series of Twins prints by John Wheeldon. This is roughly an 8X10.

Here's the back of the print- All of these items came from the same San Fran based seller on eBay, who had an eclectic array of postcards, scorecards, prints, programs, pins and random miscellany. He combined shipping on all the items, and everything was well packaged. Here's the seller's page, if any of those items intrigue you...

Turning Over A New Leaf

In news that is fascinating only to me, I added a long sought after black & white whale, a short printed 1960 Leaf Elmer Valo. Valo was towards the end of his 20 year major league career, and landed in New York with the Yankees for Spring Training. He only played in 8 games for New York before being released, but he quickly caught on with the Senators and played 2 more seasons moving with the Senators to Minnesota, and finishing his career right where he started in Philadelphia, playing 50 games for the Phillies.

The back referenced his time in the Pacific Coast League playing for the Seattle Rainiers in 1959. Now that I've found this card, I'm down to a handful of rare regional issue oddballs to complete a collection of all of the cards from his playing days.

Hmm, That's Odd . . .

Believe it or not, there are a handful of cards from former Twins Manager Tom Kelly's playing career - this is one of them!

Each card in the KMO radio set features the 1975 team schedule. They probably will never play an in-season exhibition game between a major league and minor league team again.

CACTUS SUPERCOLLECTOR

The Philadelphia Baseball Card Show has a bunch of oddballs out there, I found this one and the next one on COMC.

Sweet, another Elmer Valo to add to my collection. That's fun.

I'll have my eyes peeled for the other years to see if there are more Elmers and more Cacti.

Day Twenty Four - 1961 Peter's Meats Elmer Valo #12

Day 24: A Favorite Oddball From the 1960s

Taking the lead from Tony at Off-Hiatus Baseball Cards this will be the twenty-fourth of 30 posts, using the prompts provided. I won't necessarily post one every day, but I will do one for each card, toss in a few "insights" (as insightful as I can be, anyway), and usually include an honorable mention or two, just because I'm like that.

Here's my pick - this is a recent addition, which I found more or less accidentally. You know the 1961 Topps Harmon Killebrew card? Capless with a sweaty forehead. The card makes him look older than his age, and it's one of my least favorite cards of all time. I was toying with the idea of making a custom replacement, so I did a Google Image search for "1961 Twins Killebrew" and as I was scrolling through the pictures, I found a Peter's Meat card of a different Twin. Now I was even more curious. So I went on eBay and did a search for Peter's Meats 1961 and there were several different players for sale. The biggest surprise of all was this Elmer Valo card, which I didn't even know existed. His '61 Topps card is also capless, like Killebrew, so this might be the only card that features Valo in a Twins uniform (even if it is airbrushed).  

Since these are basically one card posts, why not share the ba---- aah! Gross. Hot Dog sweat from 1961.

A couple honorable mentions:

1960 Bazooka! I would like to try to build this set some day - maybe after I finish a few others.

1962 Post! Don't have any designs on building this set, but I am a fan of this card.

Johnny Spots Me Some Twins #SuperTraders

Now that's a great shot! Johnny of Johnny's Trading Spot is no stranger on the blog, as he's been a frequent and generous trader since the blog began.

Johnny always drops in a few cards for the bat rack mini collection.

This package was stuffed with parallels! Serial numbered cards and refractors, multi colored borders, of players old and new.

Then there was this oddball

A Triple Folder! 

Some modern cards made to look old

Lots of horizontal heroes - Sorry Tom, I'm going to hang onto the Boyd / Vogelmonster, at least for a little while! 

Great variety throughout, plenty of new and older cards, stuff I've never seen like the trippy Torii Topps All-Star.

This is how Topps Sets used to get updated, a little pen or pencil and now you've got a traded card!

This bat rack card started the mini collection, and it is a work of art!

Thanks Johnny! A great haul, and as usual my mail box barely survived under the weight of it all.

oh and P.S.Opening Day for the Twins is in

6 days!

Achieving Maximum Valo-city

You may recall that from the very start of this blog, I've enjoyed the lesser known players in MLB history. Elmer Valo came to my attention even earlier, thanks to other bloggers posting the magnificence of his 1957 Topps card. Above is a "Philadelphia Fan Favorites" card, commissioned by the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society. I'm digging deep to find Elmer Valo cards that may not be on everyone's radar.

But let's start a little more conventionally - Here are a couple Topps buybacks of "Valiant" Valo, from 1958 and 1961. 1961 was his last Topps card, he's listed as a Minnesota Twin, but the photo is obviously taken at Yankee Stadium, where he spent a portion of 1960 as a Bronx Bomber. Oddly enough, it is probably a Washington Senators uniform he's wearing, as he went from New York to D.C. before the team moved to the Twin Cities. If you see a buyback of the AWESOME 1957 Elmer Valo, please let me know, I would very much like one.

Here's a 1990 card issued by Target and the Dodgers, commemorating 100 years of the franchise. Valo played in the final Dodgers home game at Ebbets Field.

In 1984, TCMA released a set based on the Play Ball cards from the 1940s - this card was not part of the sets in 1940s, in fact it would have been Elmer's rookie card if it did exist - his first card came in the 1948 Leaf set.

This was a new one to me - it is a standard size card (unlike most of the cards in this post), released in 2011, this 40 card set features the 1957 Dodgers team. The art on all cards was created by Ronnie Joyner.

The backs are pretty familiar, though! Just like the 1960 set. They probably could have used 1957 backs, but this is a nice choice too.

Who is this guy? Not Elmer Valo....

This is a 1992 Yankees set produced by WIZ home entertainment centers and American Express.

Kinda looks like Bobby Richardson to me. Valo could possibly be flattered by the comparison, though in his career, Valo's OBP was almost 100 points higher, and he had over 200 more runs batted in.

I also found an autographed 8X10 on eBay, It was fairly cheap, so I'm guessing there's a fair chance that it's not authentic (no JSA / PSA / or even AAA certification) but it was more for the photo than the autograph.

If you know of any more oddball Elmers, drop me a line! I've got my eye on a couple Rodeo Meats cards, but they are a lot spendier than I am comfortable with at the moment...

Saturday was card show day

It literally took all weekend, but I was able to fill a PWE for every #SUPERTRADER - these will be going in the mail tomorrow!

I did make a stop on Saturday at the local card show, my first trip of 2016.

 Diamond Kings!!

 Don't get too excited...

 It's a reprint...

 Still cool, though.

 Dave is not a reprint.

 Dime box finds...

 The scan is no good, but there's my first Matty Alou certified auto.. Now I only have Jesus left to go!

 picked up the last three series one Topps Rookie All-Stars I needed . . .

Both of these are Target Field perspectives.... and hey, look - Kennys Vargas is at the plate!

And this is probably the only close up Kennys Vargas card we'll be seeing in the 2016 set... What an awesome picture, though! (I actually like most of the team cards I've seen so far. That's about all I can show you, as a great deal more cards are already packed in envelopes.

Hitting Paydirt

Sometimes things just fall into your lap - I had just finished writing up all the goals I set for 2016. I figured the best way to catch the big fish would be to set up eBay search alerts for each of the cards I was going for.

I spotted a new listing for just under the price of a blaster, and I pulled the trigger on it.

1955 Topps Double Header #85 / #86

 The scanner cut off the edge, the actual card is centered nicely. I was a little nervous about the condition because the image was a stock photo, but it was about 5 times cheaper than the other listings, and about the right price for other cards in the set in decent condition. The description said VG-EX, I would agree with that grading, so I'm pretty happy!

 This is the first Double Header I've seen in person. It's mostly sturdy, though the perforation in the center has me a little nervous, I will probably keep it in a holder rather than trying to find a special binder page to store it in. I think it is probably supposed to look a little like a ticket to the ballgame, but it's on thicker stock.

I always assumed that the card folded out or something, but Hal Brown just gets half a picture compared to Elmer.

My main target was a Rodeo Meats Elmer Valo card, but this was the backup plan. I spent way less than I thought I would have to to get it.